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“A key challenge is catching patients early – uptake of screening is not high, and it’s an area that many patients are reluctant to seek help for, or to volunteer for screening programmes.

“If our trial shows dogs can detect colorectal cancer in urine samples, the potential is there for a quick, non-invasive test, which could encourage far higher rates of testing and therefore early diagnosis.”

Bowel cancer is the fourth most common form of cancer in the UK with around 42,000 cases diagnosed each year.

Bowel cancer is one of the most common cancers in the UK for over 60's. Here are the signs and symptoms to look out for.

In training trials, the dogs had a 93 per cent reliability rate at detecting prostate cancer in urine samples, which is considerably higher than most comparable tests.

Dr Guest said: “Our dogs are highly effective bio detectors that have been in development for thousands of years. Their ability to detect disease should not be brushed aside in the hope that one day man might create a machine that’s half as good as the dogs already are.

“We are grateful to the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt for his support and look forward to presenting him with the results of our trial when they are published.”

Medical Detection Dogs has established a reputation since its foundation in 2008 for training dogs to detect cancer.

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Bowel cancer: Uptake of bowel cancer screening is low

“If our trial shows dogs can detect colorectal cancer in urine samples, the potential is there for a quick, non-invasive test

Dr Claire Guest

The trial has won the backing of Jeremy Hunt secretary of state for health.

In an interview with the BBC Victoria Derbyshire programme, he said: "I think ideas like this sometimes don't get looked at as quickly as they should, because they sometimes get put in the quackery box.

"I will personally look at this research when it comes through. One of our jobs as MPs is to question orthodoxies and look at different ways of doing things that possibly the establishment has swept under the carpet.